Commissioner J.C. Fugate, who introduced the measure, also asked the county attorney to find a way to enact an ordinance banning homosexuals from living in the county.

"We need to keep them out of here," Fugate said.

This begs the question: What is there in Rhea County that homosexuals want? Are homosexuals massing at the border, demanding entry? What's the big deal about Rhea County?

And when someone tells you not to do something, isn't that the greatest incentive to do it? So let's all go to Rhea County!

After all, they have an airport with a 4500 foot runway, with lights and all. The Magnolia House is a local bed and breakfast, which screams gay, doesn't it? Then we can all go to the Lock and Dam on Watts Bar. It "offers unlimited opportunities for any type of water recreation."

Well, that's not everybody's bag. But there are eighteen different Baptist Churches to invade, and seven other denominations if the Baptists run us off.

While in Dayton, we can visit the Scopes Museum/Rhea County Courthouse, where Dayton declared teaching about monkeys off limits - the tour is free! The Dayton Golf & Country Club is off of Highway 27 (no monkeys allowed, heehee). Another bed and breakfast, the Bailey House, is found at the old home of John Thomas Scopes. Yes, that Scopes. Then we can hike the Laurel-Snow Pocket Wilderness, 710 acres of completely barren woodland.

And that's it.

Hmm. I'm not getting why all these homosexuals are clamoring to get into Rhea County. If Commissioner Fugate really wants to burn the homosexuals, they should do something that makes us want to be there, and then not let us in. Something spectacular like offering Martha Stewart amnesty. We'd all want to be there then!

Or how about this: offering gay marriage licenses! Wouldn't that chaff our hides? "Ha, ha, you bad homosexuals - you could be married here if it weren't illegal for you to be here! Nyah, nyah, nyah, nyah!" Ooooo, that would get us, wouldn't it?

Then we couldn't stop ourselves. We'd be compelled to come in. They'd marry us, then slap us into handcuffs, and toss us into an overcrowded cell full of other married, exuberant homosexuals. What a honeymoon that would be!

And Comissioner Fugate could rest easy knowing that all those homosexuals were under lock and key, being punished properly. It must be awful for him now, thinking about how all the homosexuals want to come in and live next to him. How can the man bear to go to Chattanooga at all, with its gay bars and its AIDS resources center and its full service florists?

You see, Commissioner Fugate? Chattanooga is showing you how it's done. If you're really serious about keeping the homosexuals out, you need to make it worth their while to be there. Open a gay and lesbian center, get a gay teenager support group going. Have a drag contest! Then you might have a few homosexuals around to rail against.

The statement said it supported President Bush in his reelection campaign, and would prefer him to win in November rather than the Democratic candidate John Kerry, as it was not possible to find a leader "more foolish than you (Bush), who deals with matters by force rather than with wisdom."

In comments addressed to Bush, the group said:

"Kerry will kill our nation while it sleeps because he and the Democrats have the cunning to embellish blasphemy and present it to the Arab and Muslim nation as civilization."

This 2001 series from Knight-Ridder exposed the use of child slave labor in the Ivory Coast to harvest chocolate. At the time, there was no set way to determine if the chocolate you were eating had been harvested by a nine-year-old working 12 hour days.

The election-night mapmakers created an indelible image of political America in 2000: red states for Republicans, blue states for Democrats, and a handful of states, crowned by disputed Florida, that remained competitive until the very end. Campaign 2004 begins where 2000 left off.

Strategists for President Bush and Democratic Sen. John F. Kerry (Mass.) already have conceded a majority of the states to one another, with the election likely to turn on battles in fewer than 18 states.

With the recent Democratic victories statewide, Lousiana is crowding out Tennessee, which is considered hardcore Bush now that Gore is not in the picture.

In 18 states, the winner's margin was 6 percentage points or less, and at the start of the 2004 general election, at least 17 are seen as competitive battlegrounds, as the campaigns' initial advertising strategists suggest. The one exception is Tennessee, which cost Al Gore the presidency when it went for Bush. Without Gore on the ballot this year, the Republicans rate the favorite there.

But I would like to point out that we have just elected a Democratic governor in Tennessee. Don't count us out yet...

When I despair, I remember that all through history the ways of truth and love have always won. There have been tyrants, and murderers, and for a time they can seem invincible, but in the end they always fall. Think of it always.